By Leslie Cousins
Being visually impaired, the accessibility of any device that I purchase is a significant factor. My experience of using the Kindle keyboard, Wi-Fi, 6” E lnk Display was not easy. For a start, the Kindle user’s guide book has very small text, far too small for someone who has a visual impairment in my opinion. It would have been better to have the instruction guide in other formats such as large print, audio CD, CD ROM etc. Although the step by step instructions are provided in the device itself, it would have been useful if it was also made available as a hard copy. I found the contrast very poor in dim light and the grey background was not very pleasant on the eyes, this made my reading experience difficult and a little frustrating.
I found it difficult to download books from the device because the text size on the menus or Kindle screens, such as the Home screen or the Kindle Store cannot be changed. I found I had to download books from my computer which was inconvenient at times.
On a positive note, this device has many cool features. If you are blind or partially sighted, you can download audio books which can be very useful. The text settings can be changed to suit your reading preference. There are eight text sizes for reading books, newspapers and personal documents on this device. Both line spacing and typeface can also be amended in order to optimise your reading experience whilst you can adjust the contrast or zoom in the document when reading a PDF file. This device is light weight, slim and very handy to carry around. You can download books, audio books, magazines, newspapers and blogs in under a minute.
A cool piece of tech, however due to poor accessibility I have had to mark it down:
Points: 3/5